Reengineering the Research Administration Process

As John Fry described in his recent article, "Restructuring at
Penn: Four Basic Questions and Some Interlocking Goals" (Almanac October
17), Penn has begun to redesign the administrative processes that
support research. Sponsored research amounted to almost $300 million
last fiscal year, roughly 30% of the University's non-health care
budget. An enterprise of this magnitude needs to be managed efficiently,
and Penn's current infrastructure supporting research is old and often
cumbersome to use. With the introduction of the new Financial Management
System* and purchasing procedures, we have the
opportunity to design new administrative processes and systems that will
work synergistically to support research.

The goal of the redesign project is to develop a design and model
for process, organizational and technical improvements to Penn's
research infrastructure that will enable the University to provide cost
effective, high quality service to its faculty and sponsoring agencies.
It will examine all components of the process for obtaining and managing
sponsored research support from funding source identification to project
close-out. More specifically this project will involve.:

Identification and confirmation of the research community's
needs and requirements;

Creation of a new organizational model, including participant
roles and responsibilities, and training requirements;

Identification of information and functional requirements of
all phases of the process.

Development of a technology strategy and requirements;
and

Development of business case for change and an implementation
plan.

Two groups will provide the leadership and hard work necessary to
ensure that the project will be successful. A Steering Committee will
establish and oversee the general direction of the project. This group
will also provide required resources, resolve high-level policy and
organizational issues, provide feedback on redesign concepts, and
communicate to the Penn community on the importance of the project's
objectives.

The data-gathering and analysis of the reengineering effort will be
carried out by a Redesign Team which will be led by Ralph Amado and
Anthony Merritt. Other members of the team are Berenice Saxon, ORA;
Kristine Briggs, Office of the EVP; Elizabeth Garlatti, School of
Medicine; Robert McCann, Comptroller; George Palladino, Department of
Chemistry; Edward Read, UMIS; Denise Scala, School of Nursing; Paul
Weidner, School of Medicine; and Audrey Masciocchi, Department of
Physics and Astronomy.

The Redesign Team will carry out its initial assessment of the
current process through the use of four tools:

work distribution analysis to determine the amount of time
and dollars spent on administering research;

a survey of current "best practices" at peer
institutions;

an assessment of existing technology, both centrally and in
the schools; and

extensive surveying of faculty through a questionnaire and
in-depth focus groups.

The information-gathering activity is the most critical element of
the Redesign Team's work. The success of the project will, in large
part, depend on active participation in these survey activities. Should
you receive a survey, we urge you to respond as candidly and
thoughtfully as possible. We need everyone's ideas on how to make the
process as effective and user-friendly as possible. Therefore, in
addition to the survey, we have established an e-mail address for this
project at evpproj@pobox.
Please send us your comments and suggestions.